


The dead don't die. They look on.

by oldwickedsongs



Category: Boardwalk Empire
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-12
Updated: 2013-07-12
Packaged: 2017-12-19 06:02:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/880280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oldwickedsongs/pseuds/oldwickedsongs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Meyer visits a city that was once his. (Or a city reclaims something that belongs to her.) Angst. I wanted to write something showcasing Meyer being the last one standing, and ended up with this parable of NYC.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The dead don't die. They look on.

Eighteen months before he joins them, Meyer heads back to the City one last time. 

It’s fall when he goes but there’s a chill that sneaks up on the city early, making his knees hurt as he walks down the streets that are too crowded and too dirty now to belong to anything like what he remembers and without knowing why and not having thought of him in years, he suddenly remembers AR in 25- when crouching down to snap his sock garter, he looked up and laughed. 

_Don’t grow old, Meyer. It’s all creaks and pops after a while and boy doesn’t it get boring._

Lindy’s is a comedy club now. He’s passed it a few times and back when it shuttered it’s windows in 57, they (and by that he meant just him because Charlie was already in Naples then and he didn’t write about it because Charlie didn’t need it, not really) stood there where his table used to be, leaving the cheesecake and milk untouched as he watched the young kids gathered around the tables, bored and unaware of this place as anything but out of that musical from a few years back. 

And if Meyer turned his head, just right, he could see the corner of Broadway and 49th, where AR is still standing on the street- in all his schoolboy immortality, with hundreds of thousands blanketed around him like Lucky’s nickname, waiting for the fifty dollars owed him from some no-name who’s been lost to the City not because he needed it. No. He just liked the feel of the money in his hands. 

_Don’t grow old, Meyer. It gets boring._

He stopped by the Cotton Club, here in 82, and finds the gutted, weed infested building with graffiti to high heaven by people who only know vaguely what it was. There are angry words to the police and declarations of love from teenagers written into windows. Yellowed newspapers that were once a beggar’s bed lay in the doorway and there’s a faint smell of urine and the smell of weed and body odor.

And he thinks, just for a moment- in a way that stings like the knee pain- we’ve made this. We did this. All alone in so many ways. Then he dismisses it out of hand because why bother with it, now of all times. 

And there Benny is, alive and dapper, because he’s twenty something and owns this city as one of the Four Horsemen like Meyer was once under AR’s wing, emerging from the Cotton Club while Lena Horne sings something sad and pretty inside. Benny smiles at him, winking a little guilty as he glances at the girls on either arm. Meyer doubts he even knows their name, just as he doubts it matters to them. 

Benny looks like he wants to ask him to tag along and Meyer has no words. But he swears he hears the music.

There’s an alleyway in the Lower East Side where a building that isn’t there once stood. It’s an overgrown field where cars from all different years are parked, haphazardly, and at all angles for the public school down the street. Meyer has to crane his head to see a fire escape that isn’t there anymore.

And Charlie is leaning against the railing, cigarette perched in his mouth. He can’t be more than twenty, he’s probably closer to eighteen and he’s waiting for Meyer. He gave up school long ago, but he didn’t really question why Meyer chose to stick with it, at least for a few years. Eventually it won’t matter to either of them; when Prohibition comes. When AR remembers the name from a Bar Mitzvah and calls them up…

His so damn young, younger in looks even then AR, handsomer then Benny, and lean, tanned by the sun. He looks annoyed at having waited so long. 

And even though Meyer tries to wave to him, shouts his name and tells him look down I’m here….  
And he ignores the wondering looks from the school kids to this dotty old man they don’t recognize because why would they? He’s just another crazy, standing on the street corner, yelling at air.

…Charlie just keeps scanning the streets, waiting. 

It’s Sandy’s daughter who greets him at the hotel room. She has one of those I heart NYC shirts on and bought one for him. She kisses his nose at the face he makes, talking about the Twin Towers, where she dined one hundred and ten stories up in the air. She rolls her eyes when Meyer asks what’s wrong with Katz’s, with Lindy’s… 

_They’re not there anymore, are they, Grandpa?_

_…No I guess not._

She knows better than to ask if he’s sad. She does nuzzle close as they watch Letterman. She has Anna’s laugh. 

And that night he dreams, about the Park Central with Albert in the barber’s chair, and Frank sits just outside, enjoying a smoke and reading the racing sheets. He keeps his eyes trained on the Little Man (and Meyer hasn’t felt that young, that small in so long and he finds he misses it.) with that quiet smile on his lips and the wise advice he needs to hear before he even knows it. 

_Wait your turn, kid. It’s not so bad is it? Letterman with the grandkids?_

_No,_ Meyer agrees, although he wants to say it’s boring but finds he doesn’t mean it. _It’s not so bad._

_Besides…we’ll still be here. This City? It was always ours._


End file.
